


Zeroes Tell Me My Time's Up

by raquetgirl



Series: The Emotion [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Freeform, Gen, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8934433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raquetgirl/pseuds/raquetgirl
Summary: Imagine your breath coursing through your lungs, down into your abdomen, through your hips, shins, ankles. What does the skin between your toes feel like, Iris?Slightest of AUs, post Season 1. Iris POV.





	1. I Lost You Not Long Ago

I lost count so long ago

Barry is prickly and fretful, worried about Central City and its precipitously rising crime. Iris’s dad is worried too, but he’d seen crime waves come and go, and his worry is more for Barry. Caitlin is worried about Barry pushing himself too hard, and Cisco is worried about not pushing Barry hard enough. Wells would be on Cisco’s side, but Wells is, well, not there anymore.

Iris is relieved that they aren’t paying attention to her today. She’s gotten used to being watched. By her dad, of course, by Barry, when he is able to. And the team. Only Dr. Stein largely ignores her, which is a relief.

Today, Iris tells Team Flash (and—when did she start referring to it like that?) she’s going to her actual job and shoots them a bright smile that, combined with a twist of her torso, says goodbye more than a wave can. Barry’s at work on the treadmill, but her dad’s eyes are warm, and Caitlin and Cisco chirp farewells. 

She slows at the elevators, listening, then bypasses them and continues on to a small, out-of-the-way garden walled in by glass. She’d found it once when she’d gotten lost in the vast expanse that is STAR Labs, and had to get lost a couple more times to remember the pathway to it. But it was worth it, because it’s overgrown and quiet. It has a bench and simple fountain that drips into a tiny pool, and lots of vined plants — pothos and philodendron, fed by occasional rain and abundant sunshine — that cover the walls with now enormous glossy and velvety leaves. Surely there’d been a scientific purpose for this at some point, but now she just sweeps her hand over the stone bench to make sure it's not wet (her skirt is silk, and Iris is _good_ to her clothes) and then eases her shoes off and breathes.

Her hair lifts before she even registers the shift in air, and Barry’s beside her, in a black STAR Laboratories sweatshirt that is just starting to fray at the hems and sleeves like a flag that’s been hanging outside too long. If it doesn't catch fire, he can usually make one sweatshirt last a week or two. Barry doesn’t speak, but he scoots close enough that she can feel almost like she did when they would sit on the couch, home from college during Thanksgiving break. Close but cautious, getting to know the newest contours of each other, laid over bone deep grooves they both know how to navigate with their eyes closed. She can almost taste the ozonic scent that drifts off his skin after he’s been running. It’s chemical and clean like a summer storm.

“Hey,” he’s tilting his head toward her with that guilty and gently worried look that’s been pinned to his face ever since Eddie died. And he shifts closer, lifting a long, long arm behind her and gripping the edge of bench on her other side, not quite holding her, but close. His voice is lower than normal, and she can tell he’s being careful when he says, “I didn’t know you came here too.”

“It’s quiet,” and that’s a warning. 

They sit there together until Barry gets a text demanding that he go deal with a fire. He’s torn as he leaves her, but she waves him on, and he backs out of the garden and then disappears. Iris sits there alone until she’s sure that her dad has gone home.

\---

Maybe my heart’s numb

Missing Eddie is like remembering that she was wounded. Most of the time — okay, not most of the time, but some of the time — Iris feels fine. Limbs intact, eyes open, sense of smell working okay. But then she looks too long at a dress hanging in her closet or a certain mug or even her keys, and she’s slammed in the chest with a reminder: Eddie is gone and she’s alone.

She’d moved back in with her dad after he died, haunting the three-story Victorian she’d grown up in. A huge Boston fern in this corner, a small stained-glass window sending warm glowing light down that stairwell. And Barry—down the hall, two doors down, a bathroom between them, like it’s always been.

Iris lies on top of her neatly made bed, flat on her back, looking at the sky-blue ceiling she’d made Barry and her dad paint when she was in the seventh grade. They were supposed to sponge white clouds onto it, but she decided it was pretty as-is. Now, she looks at her phone, reading texts she’s saved from Eddie.

You look so sexy today

Oh?

Yeah--Blue is your color. But what isn’t

I was worried it was too short...

It was pleasantly so

Were people looking at me?

People are always looking at my girl

Is that what I am

Investigative journalist, then: my girl

I’ll take that :heart eyes:

See you tonight.

Today she turns, on her right side, and slides her right hand beneath the pillow under her head and tucks her left hand under her rib cage, and tries to squeeze her chest closed so that the hole inside doesn’t overtake her breath. She’d loved Eddie, maybe not enough, but more than anyone else loved him. And in a few hours, after trying to remember the exercises from the meditation class she’d taken in grad school, she won’t hurt as much. 

Imagine your breath coursing through your lungs, down into your abdomen, through your hips, shins, ankles. What does the skin between your toes feel like, Iris?

She had laughed this off in the flickering fluorescent light of a yellow-beige Midwestern U classroom, this question about the skin between her toes. It was just...there. It didn’t feel anything. But after Eddie died, after she knew about Barry, after her father stopped lying to her, she’d cling to it. She screws her eyes shut and asks herself intently: What does the skin between your toes feel like, Iris West?

Hours later, she’s groggily awakened as the moonlight floods her room, nearly bright enough to read by. She closes her eyes because she knows that when the extra pillow in her bed brushes her face just right, she can imagine she’s kissing Eddie. She presses her mouth to it, but before she can really begin to pretend, there’s a tap on her door.

“Iris?” The voice is soft, a bit raspy, and unmistakably Barry.

She swings her legs out of bed and creeps to the door, cracking it open. He’s there, in grey sweats and a red CCHS t-shirt, leaning against the doorframe, scrubbing a forefinger against the wood. His eyes are dark and warm and there’s an unhappy twist to his mouth. “You were sad today.”

“I’m okay,” she’s opening her door before she can think and lets him in. It’s silent, too silent, so she turns on her bluetooth speaker, wincing at the loud beep, and taps her phone until it finds a 90s station that approximates what she and Barry used to listen to when they were kids. Rock guitars softly fill through the room, and Barry nods along to the alt band playing.

She sits on the bed, then eases up so her back is against the pillow she’d been kissing. Barry sits beside her, turned so that his knees point, like arrows, to her. She feels his eyes on the side of her face, as her own eyes adjust. 

“How’s therapy going?” his brow is furrowed.

“It’s going,” she sighs and looks up at him. “It does make a difference, it does. But it doesn’t do much for the times when I feel like someone is sitting on my chest. I try to meditate, but...”

His hand reaches for her hand and she brings her knees up and rests them against his, so that they’re tucked in a heart shape, oriented toward each other. His arm slide around her back, and he rests his hand on the smallest part of her waist, while his lips touch her temple, and he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

She could turn her face up, just slightly, to kiss his soft, open mouth, like the two other times he came to her in the middle of the night. Maybe this time he’d kiss her back instead of simply providing a moment of warm counterpressure before moving his face away and pulling her closer into him. But no, she just tilts her face down and presses it to his shoulder. His hand tightens on her waist, and his other hand slides up her arm, over her shoulder, fingertips stuttering over her neck, and resting below her ear. It exerts the slightest force, encouraging her to look up at him.

“I’m sorry,” Barry murmurs again, smelling like mint and baking soda and summer storms.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says for the first time, suddenly, meeting his darkened eyes, pressing closer to him. His smile is confused but happy and she feels the muscles in his long thighs shift as he slides his feet over her bedspread.

“Me too,” he says as her hand reaches for his, clutching his fingers tightly.

He breaks her hold, winding his fingers through hers. She closes her eyes, and hears him whisper, “love you.” He doesn’t say anything else, but she can feel his chest rise and fall against her. She feels herself start to drift off, and when she wakes some time later, he’s gone.


	2. What You're Looking For Is Suddenly Out Of Reach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One thing about Barry Allen is that he’s never been able to dissemble when it comes to the attributes of Iris West.
> 
> Barry POV

_Don’t hold my hands accountable_

In the morning, Iris spoons waffle batter into the machine, Joe brings in the paper, and Barry makes the coffee. He customizes without thinking: black with a spoon of coconut oil whisked to a foamy head at super-speed for Iris, black, a drop of cream, and two spoons of sugar for Joe. His own is mostly milk. 

The plate of waffles at his seat is two or three times the height of Joe’s and it’s a feast of chopped nuts, whipped cream, butter, and syrup. Barry’s mouth waters. Most breakfasts just aren’t calorie dense enough to make them worth eating instead of one of Cisco’s calorie bars, but Iris makes his waffles with enough carbs, fat, and sugar to keep Barry for an hour or two — if he takes it easy.

They sit at the satin-smooth oak table Joe’s grandfather made a million years ago, some Bill Withers playing in the background, and they’ve partitioned the Sunday Picture-News. Iris has A-1 and real estate, their dad has sports and metro, and Barry has science and book reviews.

There’s an AP deep dive on some updates in gene therapy that Barry has been super curious about, but he can’t concentrate and when the top of the page flops over a bit, he shakes the newsprint to straighten it, and sees Iris’s dark eyes watching him. 

He’s suddenly lost in a flashback to the night before. Two a.m., Iris warm and heavy in his arms, eyes shut tight, breathing deeply. They are propped up against her headboard, and it is taking all of Barry’s willpower not to slide them down into a laying position. God knows he wants nothing more than to hold her for real and cover her body with his, but he knows — even if she doesn’t — that she’s not ready for that yet.

Still, his finger tips had slid over soft cotton, his lips had brushed her sweat-damp skin, and his cock had twitched more than was strictly acceptable.

Iris West, I want you, Barry thinks. More than ever. And I deserve you less than I ever have. But I love you and I think you love me, too. And I can’t let you go.

Her gaze is steady on him. Barry’s hands shake a little, and he feels his heart speeding up. It’s not quite what he feels when the Speed Force is pouring into his veins like adrenaline, it’s more like little licking flickers of lightning along his nerves. It’s a thing he only feels when he’s looking at her.

Joe breaks the spell, rattling his paper at his daughter. “Great job on this story about the Marchetti family, baby.” Smile so warm and proud and Iris’s attention shifts to her father completely. “Even I didn’t know about the stuff with their relatives in Sicily...crazy, crazy.”

“Oh my God, Daddy.” She’s suddenly the bright, whipsmart, funny Iris Barry has always known, setting her section of the paper down, and leaning toward her father with quick grin. “I had to hit about 1100 databases just to find the name of the grandmother...”

Barry listens quietly as Iris describes the work that went into her latest scoop — he doesn’t think Joe would appreciate him bringing up the fact that he’d had to speed Iris out of a closet in the Marchetti family HQ after she’d sent him a 911 text followed by a map pin of her location. They mostly keep the dangerous parts of her job between them. 

He owes her that.

Instead, he houses the cooling waffles, and lukewarm coffee and speed reads the gene therapy story, very much not noticing that she seems more like Iris than she has in a long time.

\--

_They’re young and they’re dumb_

The problem is that Barry can’t let go of the fact that he’s responsible for Ronnie’s death. And Eddie—it’s hard to think about Eddie, because thinking about Eddie leads to thinking about Eobard, and Dr. Wells, and how the last year of his life wasn’t even in the same time zone as the truth.

Iris doesn’t look at him like he’s done something wrong—no one does, in fact. But he feels it, deeply. And he doesn’t get why they don’t.

It gets easier, marginally, with Central City’s metas emerging and causing small- to medium-scale havoc. They settle into a routine. The bite of Missouri winter sometimes makes his lungs hurt when he runs, but he welcomes it, and the crackle of dry air.

And Iris--he couldn’t be prouder. Her stories make the front page of the Picture-News on a regular basis, she’s constantly fielding tips, and she’s busy, so busy they rarely see each other outside of Sunday dinner at Joe’s.

The space is good, and it gives them time to heal. She’s stopped wearing dark colors all of the time and there’s a light in her eyes he hasn’t seen in months. He wonders what she sees when she looks at him, until one day she turns the full force of her smile on him, tilts her head, and says, “you look great, Barry. Happy.”

He knows she’s referring to the the permasmile on his face, thanks to a pretty detective he’s had a couple of coffees with — Patty — and he tosses back, “You too, Iris.” It should be awkward. He still loves her, he’s kissed her—even if she doesn't remember—and yet he’s somehow dating a sweet, determined woman he’d never have expected to meet.

But for now, Patty is enough, because Iris is smiling again, and that too is enough.

Then he hears about Francine’s return, and illness, and then, and then a son—Iris’s brother, Joe’s son—and Barry’s family is so rocked by the news that he finds himself holding steady for both Iris and Joe, neither of whom are communicating with each other much less themselves. He holds Iris as she prepares for her mother’s death. He sits with Joe in the dark of his lab when Wally’s existence comes to light, and prays that some order comes to the universe soon.

One morning, early, he and Patty are trading sleepy kisses, when she turns to him and asks, “Iris is like your sister, right?”

And it nearly jerks him upright, because no, Iris is not his sister. “Um,” he rubs the back of his neck. “Not really. She’s my best friend -- we were close before I went to live with her and Joe.”

“Ahh,” and Patty’s smile is a little blurry around the edges. “None of your girlfriends got jealous?”

“You’re assuming I’ve had a lot of girlfriends,” he smiles something approximating charm and wolfishness at her.

“She’s really pretty.”

“She’s beautiful,” he says automatically, because one thing about Barry Allen is that he’s never been able to dissemble when it comes to the attributes of Iris West.

"Why didn't you two ever..." Patty's somehow gotten further away from him without him noticing, and he's flashing back to his college girlfriend who just really wanted to understand why his _friend who was a girl_ needed to stay with him in his cramped dorm at CCU instead of at her father's house 3 miles away. The answer is the same. "We're best friends," he says again, simply, because if there's two things about Barry Allen, he's gotten _very_ good at lying about how he feels about Iris West.

Patty relaxes, and he turns to look at her. She really is lovely — perfect for him, he thinks — and yet he feels rather than knows that he'll break her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> I like these kids so much. There may be more of this universe.


End file.
